Contentions

Usually Florida political parties wait until after elections to file lawsuits. This year, they’re getting an early start, reports the New York Times:

The lawsuit was filed after a stream of complaints from voters who sometimes waited nearly seven hours to vote or who did not vote at all because they could not wait for so long to do so.

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, local election supervisors in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties, where lines sometimes snaked out the door and around buildings, said they would allow voters to request and cast absentee ballots on Sunday. Voters in three other Florida counties will also be able to pick up and drop off absentee ballots. State election law permits election offices to receive absentee ballots through Tuesday as long as they are cast in person.

Early lawsuits in Florida could be a preemptive strike from Democrats in case they decide to contest Florida after the election. In 2008, 54 percent of the Florida electorate voted early, according to the Early Voting Center, a much larger percentage than other states expected to be decided by a close margin, like Ohio.

On the other hand, Florida’s early voting really does seem like a complete and utter disaster:

Chaos ensued at Miami-Dade Elections headquarters Sunday when officials closed the doors early on nearly 200 people who had been promised an extra four-hour period to vote — then reopened an hour later with more staff.

“Let us vote! Let us vote!” chanted those who refused to leave the line when doors first closed. College student Blake Yagman told The Huffington Post he was next to vote when officials decided they couldn’t serve those who showed up.

“I was there for about three and a half hours,” said Yagman, who added that because he is severely hypoglycemic he spent several hours throwing up after standing in the sun for so long. He said he had already tried to vote three times earlier this week, at two different Miami locations.

“Each of the lines was about four to five hours,” he told HuffPost. “It took my mom eight and a half hours to vote at Aventura.”

This is where the enthusiasm gap could make a significant difference. Obama had a 9-point lead over John McCain in Florida early voting in 2008. But that was when Democratic enthusiasm was outpacing Republican enthusiasm. The tables are turned this year, and it’s hard to imagine someone standing in line for eight and a half hours to vote early for a candidate they’re not really that crazy about.

Then again, it’s hard to imagine someone waiting in line for eight and a half hours to vote early for any candidate. At some point between 30 and 45 minutes, isn’t the entire convenience benefit of early voting is nullified? Florida rarely ceases to surprise me, but you would think the state would have a handle on these things after 2000.